Hanif Kureishi - Something to Tell You

“You can’t go back.”

“And you don’t want to go forward?”

“I wish we didn’t have to leave this house.”

“You get any rest?”

“Rest?” I said. “I’m ready for rehab.”

“Excellent.”

I asked her not to give me her account of the previous night; I didn’t want to recall it. She said she’d pin her lips, which was unusual for her, but she giggled a little. “Impotent, eh?”

Mostly, though, she was worrying about Karim and whether he would get in touch again. If he was going to appear on I’m a Celebrity…, he’d be in demand from other females, and she wanted to make the most of him before this.

However much you dislike the country, you drive back into the city on a Sunday night after a weekend away and your heart sinks: the dirt, the roughness, the closeness of everyone and everything, so much so that you can almost believe you like leaving London.

On Sunday mornings most of the population of Britain, teenagers aside, can be found in the park, strolling, jogging, walking the dog. On Sundays, Rafi and I played football with other fathers-actors, film directors, novelists-and their sons, ranging in age from five to twelve. The wives and girlfriends sat on benches on the touchline, drinking lattes, distracting their girls and helping the boys with their boots and laces.

The fathers didn’t want to embarrass themselves by appearing to have made an effort, but the kids came dressed for the match even though the goal at one end was two trees and, at the other, bags and discarded tops. The pitch was muddy and broken, with a pool of water to one side, into which numerous children plunged, kicking out and usually falling over.

Rafi trotted across this in the full Christmas-present Manchester United kit, sweatbands on each wrist as well as a captain’s armband, shin pads and immaculate Nike Total 90s in silver. Occasionally, he sported other shirts, those of Juventus or Barcelona, which I had picked up for him when attending conferences in Europe, but apart from the unrepeated “Arsenal incident,” he would not wear the shirt of another British club. His hair was glued up like a stiff brush, and he wouldn’t head the ball for fear of mussing it. If he did score-which he often did, being quick, persistent and surprisingly strong-we relived it repeatedly, acting it out in the kitchen.

It’s well known that you have to be wary when telling people you support the Red Devils. If you can’t give a convincing reason, you risk being accused of merely following a successful and fashionable club. My reasons were impeccable, and nicely obscure. I’d liked football as a boy and played most days in the park, but lost interest as a teenager when I realised girls preferred music to football.

I became interested again only when Eric Cantona, a Frenchman then playing for Leeds, joined Manchester United in 1992, “transforming the fortunes of the club,” as they say on the sports pages. Man United began to win cups again. Cantona was the only footballer I’d heard of who’d had psychoanalysis; not only that, it was a Lacanian analysis. When he was playing for Nîmes and was then transferred to Leeds, he suffered much anxiety at leaving his analyst. He said, “When I am in analysis, it is like an oil change. I am in my best form, I play my best. Yes, I must start again. It is no longer a curiosity but a necessity. As a matter of fact, everyone should have the courage to have done one. Everyone should at the very least read Freud and Groddeck.”

A psychoanalysed midfielder who once inflicted, during a match, a vicious two-footed kung fu kick on an abusive Crystal Palace supporter, as well as reading the crazy Groddeck-the “wild” analyst who Freud admired, and one of the first to investigate psychosomatic medicine-was too much to resist. I was Man United for life, and so would be my flesh and blood.

I had wondered whether I might have asked Ajita to join us in the park; she and I had been chatting on the phone every day, getting to know one another again. But she had invited Rafi and me to the country, where she had returned with Mustaq “to relax,” after only a brief visit to his house in Soho. I had considered returning to Mustaq’s country place; although I was nervous of the relationship with Ajita going too fast, I did have plenty to say to her. But Rafi had refused, not wanting to spend the weekend with “only lame grown-ups,” even if one of them was a rock star.

All the fathers were enthusiastic about the Sunday-morning game, and competitive too. The other families socialised with each other, the kids in and out of each other’s houses. Rafi and I didn’t do that, but when I ran into any of the other fathers, I was pleased to see them. It was hard to dislike anyone you played football with, though all the boys would get upset or even feel rejected if no one passed to them. Like me, Rafi was a bad loser. As a younger boy he was the sort to pick up his ball and walk off if a goal was scored against him.

I was looking forward to getting back to my place, where I would sigh and sink down like an exhausted dog. Football was the only physical exercise I got or wanted; by the end, I felt as though I’d been rolled down the side of a hill in a barrel. Still, I considered a goal I’d headed from a corner taken by Rafi to be the second greatest moment of my life. (The first was his birth, of course.) I had lumbered in from outside the box, catching the ball on the forehead and briefly blinding myself. Light returned, with cheering. The ball had flown between the two trees, actors were ruffling my hair and Rafi had climbed onto my back.

After the match, the adults and kids sat on benches outside the tea-house, eating crisps and drinking hot chocolate. Going into the public toilet, I discovered three semi-undressed Polish men having a stand-up wash. One perched on one leg with his foot out while another man soaped it. Scattered around, there were clothes and bags. Lots of Poles slept rough in the area; if they could survive for three years, they’d become entitled to state benefits. As I left, two policemen were rushing towards the toilets.

Outside, four pretty girls-two of them from Rafi’s school-had appeared and gathered around the boy. Dressed in boots, miniskirts and numerous bits of bright bling, they stood close to one another, chattering about mobile phones. They were dressed a little extravagantly for the park, but one of them had rung Josephine earlier, who’d told them where Rafi was. He was a favourite among the girls at school. They’d come to see him play football.

“Did you see my goal?” he said.

He wasn’t looking at them but was aware, from the little amused smile on his face-which reminded me of my father-that they were looking at him. As they talked about his goal, he shook his head, as if at the daftness of all they had to say.

His pose was cool, his mussed hair looked good. His jewellery and clothes were always carefully chosen in H &M. The previous weekend we’d gone to the sales, where I’d been looking for clothes for myself, and returned with bags full of boy gear. He looked better than me in every way, more hip and stylish, and more handsome. That was how it had to be. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help feel a pang of both bitterness and regret. Sometimes, all you wanted was to be fancied. Why had I always been less confident and far more anxious than he appeared to be? I couldn’t resist envying him the years of pleasure with women he had ahead of him.

The girls wanted to leave; they were nervous, convinced a man was watching them through the trees. They arranged to meet up later with Rafi at the shopping centre, their favourite place, where they’d help him choose new trainers.

“I know how to be cool,” he said to me on the way home. “And I don’t even wear designer, apart from the D and G belt, unless I’m really in the mood.”